Teaching Experimental Methods While Bringing Smiles to Your Students' Faces

Abstract

In this article, we illustrate a simple field experiment that facilitates student understanding of several important methodological issues, including random assignment, equalizing the strength of manipulations, and experimenter bias. The basic hypothesis of the field experiment is that people respond to smiles with smiles but fail to reciprocate frowns. Several classroom replications have demonstrated that this effect is reliable, although the processes underlying the findings are still unknown and consequently generate useful theoretical discussions by students. An evaluation of the demonstration's effectiveness showed that students increased their understanding of experimentation and attributed much of their learning to the field experiment.